If you CA on the pull you'd be able to get the full benefit of hurricane, sunfire cleave and a buffed starfall I assume, unless CA works different in WoD.

It does work differently, but not in a way that is relevant to this. It gives an addition 20% damage bonus to everything and pauses Eclipse, rather than resetting to 0. Other than that, it gives the full benefits of both Eclipses at once, including both MF and SunF.

So i finally got the beta last night and i went on to check out the new eclipse system, and i must say that the new eclipse is complete garbage, it might improve with more haste, but the way it was on the beta was very boring and honestly not engaging at all.

When you make projections about WoD CMs using MoP data I can't take your post seriously. I have personally asked for glyph of focus to make a return and I am in favor of glyphs to alter the behavior of the balance druid signature spell. Going as far as saying that this would have a negative impact on CMs is ridiculous.
*snip*
Never seen such unrealistic arguments on this forum. I'd listen to John Boehnr for 5 minutes if I wanted to hear such weak arguments.

I honestly haven't read any news or confirmation that states whether WoD CMs will be dramatically different than MoP ones. By your logic, WoD raids != MoP raids, WoD PVP != MoP PVP. Should we stop discussing those too? Just because there's not been explicit information on them yet, doesn't mean we can't discuss them.

If you honestly think that pulling an entire room of mobs (think Scarlet Monastary - the one that starts in graveyard) in a CM is not a problematic thing, I don't know what to say. Starfall is only a 4+ target AOE? That's news to me too.... Here's the realistic situations where pulling out of combat mobs is detrimental (without glyphing guided stars):

If you're gonna say just use Glyph of Guided Stars, well - no glyphs should be mandatory to prevent pulling mobs that aren't even supposed to be in combat with you! Pulling mobs to tank is just as easy with moonfire pull, or Faerie Swarm (unless that's changed). The discuss here is about the unwanted mobs that Starfall will pull if you don't glyph of Guided Stars.

Deliverance mechanics would include stuff like (using live - not Beta as example as I'm not up to date with all changes of all classes/specs):
a) Serpent Spread or Pet cleave for hunters - simple single GCD multi-dot or cleave w/out a specific setup - we need to be in Solar for our dot cleave
b) Fire and Brimstone
c) Various mage bombs
d) Mind Sear as a 'movable' AOE
e) RJW + SEF (WW monks) etc

All of these are much better ways to actually do AOE in a race against time. But since we can't really discuss CMs at all... anything I say is pointless. Just out of genuine curiosity - what can we discuss as per your logic?

Originally Posted by huth

Only for boss fights with an AoE phase right at the beginning. For trash, it doesn't really matter, and in a CM, you'll probably not be out of combat for long enough to have Eclipse reset.

That I agree to as well - I don't think we would be out of combat long for the Eclipse to reset too often - which is one of the good things. How many times would Eclipse reset in CMs is something that's nearly impossible to predict. But it's not impossible to see that every time it does, we've got a downtime that other specs don't suffer from. Sure we have CA but it's a 3 min CD.

You can use LoS to control Starfall very easily. Unless you expect that there will be instances with warehouse-sized chambers filled with mob packs every 30 yards.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by kosars

it has a fairly large radius. Significantly larger than prox aggro actually. And why is this situation so "unrealistic"? For that matter, why do trash pulls not count? There's more to the game than raid bosses and pvp, so why exclude most of that?

What if I'm out in the world, and I pull 4-5 guys. Starfall would be pretty good here, if not for the fact that it'd end up pulling more like 20. - yea, I could use guided stars, but at what point does it become useless? - aka, I don't starfall because I'd pull way too much, or I starfall with guided stars, and by the time i've spent the gcds to dot everything at which time the first couple are almost dead, and starfall is now useless, im better off starsurging. (Or i starfall first, then start dotting, and the majority of starfall is wasted - I still should have starsurged).

Dismissing something like that because it's not important to you is just flat out rude. There's a lot to the game, even if you don't do most of it.

You CAN argue it's just a QoL matter, which really, imo, is the only valid argument here (effectiveness vs QoL), but please, don't call it unrealistic, or obscure or uncommon, or unimportant.

If starfall hits only mobs in combat: You have to use Moonfire to pull.
If you use Guided Stars: You have to use Moonfire to pull
If you use the WoD implementation of Starfall: You pull more but you are free to either Hurricane, Moonfire and/or cc (typhoon, vortex)

I just don't see how MoP starfall is any better, or gives more GCDs than the rest.

It seems pretty clear some people are in favor of Starfall pulling everything and some people are not. I just hope we get both the option to pull everything and to only pull in-combat targets, without the latter being gimped because the glyph for it reduces the maximum potential for Starfall (not saying glyph of guided stars isn't useful in some situations where you only want Starfall to hit a select group of mobs from a larger pool that is in combat).

Also is CA bugged in beta atm? From some early testing (got in yesterday). It seems like CA stops eclipse and gives a 0% modifier on eclipse, instead of giving a 100% modifier and a 20% extra damage increase.

It seems pretty clear some people are in favor of Starfall pulling everything and some people are not. I just hope we get both the option to pull everything and to only pull in-combat targets, without the latter being gimped because the glyph for it reduces the maximum potential for Starfall (not saying glyph of guided stars isn't useful in some situations where you only want Starfall to hit a select group of mobs from a larger pool that is in combat).

according to tweets they are pretty adamant on the glyph being the option if you don't want to pull everything.

The new ecplise feels clunkier to me, not only because of the low haste values but because it's not as clear on the bar when you actually leave the "eclipse" phases. Especially for new players I think that needs to be a bit more clear cut, its not really indicated anywhere that I can easily see, besides the button glow.

Can't test it right now but does anyone know if you pop CA on the pull @ 0, does that make Flare hit the hardest since its balanced?

according to tweets they are pretty adamant on the glyph being the option if you don't want to pull everything.

The new ecplise feels clunkier to me, not only because of the low haste values but because it's not as clear on the bar when you actually leave the "eclipse" phases. Especially for new players I think that needs to be a bit more clear cut, its not really indicated anywhere that I can easily see, besides the button glow.

Can't test it right now but does anyone know if you pop CA on the pull @ 0, does that make Flare hit the hardest since its balanced?

In theory, using CA anywhere in the eclipse bar gives the same benefits because it gives the 2 eclipse peak bonuses simultaneously.

You can use LoS to control Starfall very easily. Unless you expect that there will be instances with warehouse-sized chambers filled with mob packs every 30 yards.

- - - Updated - - -

If starfall hits only mobs in combat: You have to use Moonfire to pull.
If you use Guided Stars: You have to use Moonfire to pull
If you use the WoD implementation of Starfall: You pull more but you are free to either Hurricane, Moonfire and/or cc (typhoon, vortex)

I just don't see how MoP starfall is any better, or gives more GCDs than the rest.

I mean, if you want to get into semantics, you could just mount and pull them all with prox aggro and then go to town, negating your entire argument, but that wasn't the point.

The point was, you shouldn't be dismissing arguments out of hand because it's something you didnt think of, or you wouldn't do, or you don't find pratical, or w/e, because it just may be something important to someone else. Argue why you like the new one all you want, or what benefits it has, or what you didn't like about the old way, but don't dismiss someone else's point of view because it doesn't align with your own.

For the record, I like "new" starfall. I forsee it being problematic in CMs, but then again the class was never very good in CMs to begin with (in comparison to other ranged classes).

It seems pretty clear some people are in favor of Starfall pulling everything and some people are not.

I am in favour of starfall having no target cap, no longer being suppressed during stun, no longer being removed when you shapeshift and starfall being on a charge based system that could allow you to have 3 or more sraight casts in a row.
IF the proposed trade off for these changes is that we can no longer just click it in instances and forget about, or that we must glyph it and chain it with well casted Sunfire's thats fine with me, cause i have seen nothing to convince me that the beta Starfall is not Substantially better than whats live. And even with the out of combat mechanic this spell will do SUBSTANTIALLY more dmg in aoe scenario's than it does now.

I can live with the slightly clumsy mechanic cause either way this beta version of the spell does its job(AE dmg) better than live

I am in favour of starfall having no target cap, no longer being suppressed during stun, no longer being removed when you shapeshift and starfall being on a charge based system that could allow you to have 3 or more sraight casts in a row.

If you don't need the charges otherwise, you can keep it up for 48 seconds without a proc at level 100. Just a single proc in that timeframe bumps it up to 72.(+1 charge from proc, +1 from normal recharge)

With just a little luck, we can keep up the barrage for quite a while.

A little math on MF/SuF during movement. We know that a poorly timed MF or SuF can actually cause your total damage to go down, because of sin-wave-snapshot mechanics. I wanted to find out where it hurts, and where it is better than nothing (of course better than nothing might be worse than Rejuv, another movement option).

I used 60% mastery and 15% haste for these calculations. I also assumed that the direct damage has the same strength as a single DoT tick, and that SuF is only ticking on one target.

MF: Assuming you refresh MF every 40s, just as your bar hits 100 lunar (not quite 8s after it was at zero), there is no penalty in throwing another MF while lunar is rising (although just after leaving solar the gain can be very small). While lunar is falling, net damage becomes negative during the last 5s. Right at the end, the lost DoT damage is over three times the damage gained from the direct damage.

SuF: The optimal patchwork SuF rotation (two SuF per cycle) is A SuF just as you reach the Solar half of the bar, and another 14s later (a bit more than 1s after the bar starts moving down from its peak). If you always make those two casts, another SuF cast anywhere in the cycle gives at least some net gain in total SuF damage.

SuF during movement comes out better because:
- MF "patchwerk" ticks are at full strength, and have a long duration. Weakening a strong DoT for a long time is expensive.
- SuF "patchwork" ticks weren't cast at 100% eclipse, and the durations are shorter. Overwriting a shorter, weaker DoT is more tolerable.

Stellar Flare is at its strongest when the Eclipses are balanced. Either 0 Energy - 15%Solar-15%Lunar or CA - 100%Solar-100%Lunar, makes no difference.

Thank you for this clarification!

Originally Posted by kosars

For the record, I like "new" starfall. I forsee it being problematic in CMs, but then again the class was never very good in CMs to begin with (in comparison to other ranged classes).

I'm in a similar position - I am stoked for the fact that it doesn't cancel (if it behaves that way) on stunned, or shapeshifting. The latter part of CMs is something I'd like to see improved and be somewhat equally desirable in CMs.

For the record, I like "new" starfall. I forsee it being problematic in CMs, but then again the class was never very good in CMs to begin with (in comparison to other ranged classes).

Yea well, the scaling has been nerfed a bit, so it doesnt mean boomkins will be bad in CMs. Witout any tweak, boomkins needed to be weak under current design because it wouldve made them blatantly overpowered at higher gear levels. With the new druid aoe which is a lot more cleave-friendly and has no single target dps loss, boomkins might end up being really good.

Starsurge won't proc nearly as much with the new system, i actually find i have few SS procs on my full hwf druid on the beta.

I just find it a bit funny everyone is in favor of the new starfall, saying you can glyph guided stars because sunfire cleaves (mobs have to be stacked and you have to be solar eclipse...), there is very little positive to having starfall pull everything and several inconveniences. Just let starfall hit mobs in combat only, make a minor glyph that allows it to hit non-combat mobs too, while having guided stars present, there will be no complaining that way.

Firstly there are some amazing spell effects, not only for the players, but it seems NPCs got a big boost this exspansion. Khadgar (the mage) blowing up damsn n shiz with a frost/fire/arcane bomb! Shamans (npcs and mobs alike) ripping rock from the ground to pound you with. The zones ans spells within them are visually pleasing.

@Boomkins I'm running without guided stars atm. I'm a 14/14 HC raider, so would like to say I have pretty good situational awareness, even without a list of in game addons I'm missing. Its incredibly good for tagging mobs whilst leveling, which YOU KNOW on release will be harder than actually killing them. It has that 'here comes the pain' feeling in dungeons too. Honestly, I've not wiped the group once by pulling the world with it. Youre forgetting (in theory) everything behind you is dead, there arn't usually two packs directly infront of each other, and if you only want to hit a certain pack you hug the wall and the pull range is cut in half. I like the starfall changes, and the fact it shares charges with SS will make for good game play.

I'm missing NS HT, but honestly that's about it.

My main concern is leveling SUCKS. It always has as boomkin, 85 to 90 was a pain in the ass, but this is even worse. (Take this with a pinch of salt though, as I'm playing a premade ilv 500 chicken, cant really compare it to my 587 on live, or the fact I'm questing alone and not in a party of 3-5 players like I will be on release).
With that said, as a ilv 500 chicken, I'm pretty much only casting starfires and that's annoying as hell. Even when you run around and think you've managed to stay in combat you 'sunfire' only to find the bar resets and you've just moonfired that 1 mob in the middle of 5 others.
Yeah sure you can AC to solar, but doing that on every pull isn't fun. With our survivabilty somewhat nerfed pulling too much, and then only being able to starfall/moofire blanket before having 3 days of starfire casts can be dangerous. (Again fixed by better geared, ppl with you etc but its a genuine concern while solo questing). The insta SS perk will help alot too.
I managed to lv to 92, and got enhanced boomkin form at 91 and again at 92, so I'm guessing they've not fixed perks yet. It also increases my armour number, but doesn't chance me damage reduction for some reason.

Last night I did a dungeon with stellar flare, and honestly it felt horrible. I found myself on trash against 3-5 mobs, wanting to put SF on all of them, but know they would all be different strengths, I found myself missing moonfire/sunfire casts because of it, tracking if I should use wrath or starfire was a nightmare and overall the only thing that felt usefull was starfall. Looking at logs this morning, flare does hit hard, as does starfall, and sunfire if theyre clustered and you can either get it off at 100% eclipse, or maintain good uptime at either end of the eclipse. But the rotation was an absolute mess.

That's with about 5 hours of 'questing' rotation practice, obviously it will get better, have standard ui, and no weakauras was a massive pain, and once beta allows for addons I'm sure I'll be much more comfortable with it. Obviously dropping flare would make the rotation easier to begin with, but balance of power seems a little meh, and Euphoria feels as though it would only make matters worse (total speculation I have tried neither BOP or Euphoria yet) but will report back once I have.

Firstly there are some amazing spell effects, not only for the players, but it seems NPCs got a big boost this exspansion. Khadgar (the mage) blowing up damsn n shiz with a frost/fire/arcane bomb! Shamans (npcs and mobs alike) ripping rock from the ground to pound you with. The zones ans spells within them are visually pleasing.

@Boomkins I'm running without guided stars atm. I'm a 14/14 HC raider, so would like to say I have pretty good situational awareness, even without a list of in game addons I'm missing. Its incredibly good for tagging mobs whilst leveling, which YOU KNOW on release will be harder than actually killing them. It has that 'here comes the pain' feeling in dungeons too. Honestly, I've not wiped the group once by pulling the world with it. Youre forgetting (in theory) everything behind you is dead, there arn't usually two packs directly infront of each other, and if you only want to hit a certain pack you hug the wall and the pull range is cut in half. I like the starfall changes, and the fact it shares charges with SS will make for good game play.

I'm missing NS HT, but honestly that's about it.

My main concern is leveling SUCKS. It always has as boomkin, 85 to 90 was a pain in the ass, but this is even worse. (Take this with a pinch of salt though, as I'm playing a premade ilv 500 chicken, cant really compare it to my 587 on live, or the fact I'm questing alone and not in a party of 3-5 players like I will be on release).
With that said, as a ilv 500 chicken, I'm pretty much only casting starfires and that's annoying as hell. Even when you run around and think you've managed to stay in combat you 'sunfire' only to find the bar resets and you've just moonfired that 1 mob in the middle of 5 others.
Yeah sure you can AC to solar, but doing that on every pull isn't fun. With our survivabilty somewhat nerfed pulling too much, and then only being able to starfall/moofire blanket before having 3 days of starfire casts can be dangerous. (Again fixed by better geared, ppl with you etc but its a genuine concern while solo questing). The insta SS perk will help alot too.
I managed to lv to 92, and got enhanced boomkin form at 91 and again at 92, so I'm guessing they've not fixed perks yet. It also increases my armour number, but doesn't chance me damage reduction for some reason.

Last night I did a dungeon with stellar flare, and honestly it felt horrible. I found myself on trash against 3-5 mobs, wanting to put SF on all of them, but know they would all be different strengths, I found myself missing moonfire/sunfire casts because of it, tracking if I should use wrath or starfire was a nightmare and overall the only thing that felt usefull was starfall. Looking at logs this morning, flare does hit hard, as does starfall, and sunfire if theyre clustered and you can either get it off at 100% eclipse, or maintain good uptime at either end of the eclipse. But the rotation was an absolute mess.

That's with about 5 hours of 'questing' rotation practice, obviously it will get better, have standard ui, and no weakauras was a massive pain, and once beta allows for addons I'm sure I'll be much more comfortable with it. Obviously dropping flare would make the rotation easier to begin with, but balance of power seems a little meh, and Euphoria feels as though it would only make matters worse (total speculation I have tried neither BOP or Euphoria yet) but will report back once I have.

My feelings about Steller Flare exactly, it felt wierd when trying to throw it on more than one target. I did like the feel of euphoria, not a big fan of the long cast time on starfire and the shortened eclipse time wasnt too much of a problem.